By now, most people would agree that AI is in the process of fundamentally changing how we work and solve problems. But this technology is still too often thought of as an addition to the work we do, rather than a fundamental part of it.
AI is not something that you can just plop on the end of a finished product, like a cherry on top of a sundae. Instead, using AI responsibly and wisely means thinking through how it can be used most effectively at every layer, from the datacenter that powers AI functionality to the people and organizations that are benefiting from its capabilities.
As we embark on another Microsoft Ignite, our company is empowering the complete lifecycle of AI, creating tools and solutions to drive the next generation of digital transformation for every organization and at every level of the work they do.
We envision a future where organizations become Frontier Firms by using AI for unlocking creativity and innovation, allowing the next great ideas to surface.
These are some of the major themes we are seeing with this year’s Ignite products and features:
AI in the flow of human ambition
At Microsoft, we believe that all great ideas start with human ambition, which can be accessed and unlocked using the capabilities in Microsoft 365 Copilot and an agent ecosystem.
Work IQ amplifies your IQ. It’s the intelligence layer that enables Microsoft 365 Copilot and agents to know how you work, with whom you work and the content you collaborate on. Built on your data, memory and inference, it connects to the rich company knowledge in your emails, files, meetings and chats, plus your preferences, habits, work patterns and relationships. It allows Copilot to make connections, unlock insights and predict the next best action based on native integrations, not a patchwork of third-party connectors. And now, you can tap into the expertise of Work IQ with APIs to build agents tuned to your unique workflows and business needs.
Work IQ also is powering many of the updates across Microsoft 365 Copilot announced at Ignite today.
Ubiquitous innovation and intelligence
In a Frontier Firm, there are makers in every room of the house. People on the frontlines are closest to the work problems that need to be solved. They can create agents to help them in their day-to-day work.
How do AI agents know what to do with your data? Foundry IQ and Fabric IQ help AI agents understand what users are doing, bridge the gap between raw data and real-world business meaning and find the context to make decisions.
Fabric IQ brings together analytical, time series and location-based data with your operational systems under one shared model tied to business meaning. This gives you a live, connected view of your business, so both people and AI can act in real time. If you are a customer who is already using Power BI for your business intelligence reporting, all of that pre-existing data modeling work will act as an immediate accelerant, giving your agents the unique context that defines how your business runs.
Foundry IQ takes this further with a fully managed knowledge system designed to ground AI agents over multiple data sources — including Microsoft 365 (Work IQ), Fabric IQ, custom applications and the web. This single endpoint for knowledge has routing and intelligence built in, enabling higher-quality reasoning, safer actions and more value for builders.
Microsoft Agent Factory is a program that brings these agent IQ layers together to help organizations build agents with confidence. With a single metered plan, customers can start building with IQ using Microsoft Foundry and Copilot Studio. They can deploy their agents anywhere, including Microsoft 365 Copilot, with no upfront licensing and provisioning required. Eligible organizations can also tap into hands-on support from top AI Forward Deployed Engineers and access tailored role-based training to boost AI fluency across teams.
Observability at every layer
By 2028, businesses are projected to have[1] 1.3 billion AI agents automating workflows. Most organizations don’t yet have a way to observe, secure or govern them — if not governed, AI agents are the new shadow IT.
Microsoft Agent 365 enables you to observe, manage and secure your AI agents, whether the agents are created with Microsoft platforms, open-source frameworks or third-party platforms.
It equips them with many of the same apps and protections as people, tailored to agent needs, saving IT time and effort on integrating agents into business processes. It includes the Microsoft security solutions Defender, Entra, Purview and Foundry Control Plane to protect and govern agents, productivity tools including Microsoft 365 apps and Work IQ to help people work more efficiently and Microsoft 365 admin center to manage agents.
This is only a small selection of the many exciting features and updates we will be announcing at Ignite. As a reminder, you can view keynote sessions from Microsoft executives, including Judson Althoff, Scott Guthrie, Charles Lamanna, Asha Sharma and Ryan Roslansky, live or on-demand.
Plus, you can get more on all these announcements by exploring the Book of News, the official compendium of all today’s news.
Frank X. Shaw is responsible for defining and managing communications strategies worldwide, company-wide storytelling, product PR, media and analyst relations, executive communications, employee communications, global agency management and military affairs.
Related:
Partners leading the AI transformation: Microsoft Ignite 2025 recap
[1] IDC Info Snapshot, sponsored by Microsoft, 1.3 Billion AI Agents by 2028, May 2025 #US53361825
The post From idea to deployment: The complete lifecycle of AI on display at Ignite 2025 appeared first on The Official Microsoft Blog.
This post originally appeared on The Official Microsoft Blog.